I know. Canon and I have only a passing acquaintance. This is truth.

[bedlamsbard]

Wait, there are seventy years between VotDT and SC? SEVENTY YEARS?

And, I mean, even if Rilian is thirty or forty -- my bet is thirtysomething, though heaven knows they're probably going to make him younger FOR A CHANGE, and I'd already had him kidnapped at somewhere between thirteen and eighteen because it's, what, ten years between his kidnapping and SC? -- nobody freaked out about Caspian not having an heir for the first thirty or forty years of his reign? Or told him to get a new wife? Wouldn't Ramandu's daughter have passed childbearing age? (Or, wait, never mind, she's the daughter of a star, she's probably ageless.)

Oh my God, I have to go find the place where I babbled about the Dustverse conspiracy theories about Rilian's return, because I feel this sudden knowledge makes them so much more legitimate.

Seriously, seventy years? I thought it was only around fifty or so. Hell, that may actually make the three hundred years I have between SC and Dust/LB come up short, and LB says two hundred years since Rilian's reign.

Seriously, seventy years? I was wondering why Caspian was so old and decrepit when it couldn't possibly have been that long, judging by the age of his son alone. Of course, I was under the impression he knocked up his wife as soon as he got back to Narnia. CLEARLY I WAS WRONG.

(This is brought to you by chapter three of the audiobook version of The Silver Chair, which is actually really good. I go on and off with audiobooks, but Narnia works for them.)

Comments

[juliekarasik]

$deity knows I love your Aslan conspiracy theory - is that the same one or something else?

I like to think of Lewis as the polar opposite of Tolkien when it comes to their approaches to world-building and continuity. Tolkien wrote encyclopedias that happened to have stories attached to them, while Lewis wrote stories with just enough internal coherence to let him make the points he was retrying to make.

And, y'never know... maybe there was a pregnancy right after they got back and something went horribly wrong?

[bedlamsbard]

It's a different conspiracy theory, one that doesn't have to do so much with the story but the internal world, the kind of rumors that might crop up after an heir's long disappearance. The thing is, I know I wrote them down somewhere, but I can't find them. *gnashes teeth*

[juliekarasik]

Like... it's not really him, just a well coached imposter a la Perkin Warbeck?

[bedlamsbard]

Well, those two, but something along the general lines of it not being Rilian who came back, but Rilian's son by the Lady of the Green Kirtle, or that it was Rilian that came back, but that he came back with a child, or that the son he had by his wife wasn't, but a babe found floating in a boat in the underground lake, Rilian's child by the Lady of the Green Kirtle -- variations on a story like that, so that by the time LB/Dust rolls around, it's a fairly well accepted story that the line of the kings of Narnia also bears a witch's blood.

[juliekarasik]

Further undermining a royal house that was pretty good at shooting itself in the foot anyway, it seems. Nice.

[bedlamsbard]

Hey, crazy rumors come with being a monarch!

...they're probably not too happy that Caspian married some chick he met at the end of the world who claims to be the daughter of a star rather than some Narnian part-human or Telmarine lady or some advantageous Archenlander princess, either.